Taking a page from the darker verges of his In Bruges performance (already a pretty black piece of work, there), Brendan Gleeson stalks onto the screen in The Guard like his character couldn't decide whether to get up for work that morning or shoot himself in the head. Not because he's depressed, but maybe just to see what it was like. For today, Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is on the scene, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?
A garda (Irish police officer) in a tiny, remote wind-blown pocket of a village on the western coast, Boyle takes himself and his work just seriously enough to get through the day. If the situation calls for it, he'll do what he finds necessary to make up the difference, whether it's popping a tab of acid found on the road after a coming across a bloody mess of teens who drove themselves into a wall, blithely moving evidence around at a murder scene, or blurting out wildly racist statements in front of a black FBI officer ("Not in front of the American," Boyle's superior growls at him, after Boyle argues tongue-in-cheek that racism is part and parcel of his "Irish culture").
Saddled with a new officer out of Dublin (a precinct whose inhabitants take a pretty rough beating throughout), Boyle is rolling his eyes at the kid when not insulting him to his face. "'I'm on it, Sarge,'" Boyle mutters to a suspect the two are questioning, "Thinks he's in Detroit." Boyle plays the role of the lazy, uncaring, small-town cop to a tee, though it's obvious that he's smarter than nearly anybody on the screen at any given time. Worse for him, he knows it, and this knowledge seems to leave him stranded and adrift, finding distraction where he can find it, such as telling a young boy that a derringer is actually a gun for shooting "very small Protestants."
The FBI agent is a preppie piece of upright American-ness named Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle, playing straight man to Gleeson's scene-stealer), who is there chasing a boat loaded with a half-billion dollars' worth of drugs that he thinks some smugglers are in town to pick up. The two of them are tossed together for some desultory police work and numerous sparring sessions that Boyle inevitably gets the best of. Boyle is mildly interested in the case, though to tell the truth his mind is more on that pair of hookers he's got lined up for his day off; that, and the fact that his mother (a sublimely droll Fionnula Flanagan) is in hospice waiting to die. Things get slightly more personal once the smugglers kill another garda, but even so, Boyle keeps a solid line of obsidian-black sarcasm between him and his work. So do the smugglers themselves, a trio of bickerers, two of whom (the equally marvelous Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong) seem nearly as bored by the dreary routine of their work as Boyle does.
Writer/director John Michael McDonagh is actually the brother of playwright and In Bruges creator Martin McDonagh, and it's difficult to see much daylight between the two. Though John appears to be less insistent on wreaking gruesome bloody havoc on his characters than Martin is, the two share a love of and affinity for icepick-sharp humor that's as vicious as it is deadpan. He is also more interested in tweaking pop culture, such as the smart riffs on The Usual Suspects that start cropping up near the conclusion, or the running gag in which the locals (as well-versed in serial-killer lore as any good American) ask hopefully, "Behavioral Science Unit?" when they find out there's an FBI agent in their midst. For John, the thing is not the crime, it's what people say before, during, and afterwards that matters; the more profane and shrewdly offensive, the better.
A garda (Irish police officer) in a tiny, remote wind-blown pocket of a village on the western coast, Boyle takes himself and his work just seriously enough to get through the day. If the situation calls for it, he'll do what he finds necessary to make up the difference, whether it's popping a tab of acid found on the road after a coming across a bloody mess of teens who drove themselves into a wall, blithely moving evidence around at a murder scene, or blurting out wildly racist statements in front of a black FBI officer ("Not in front of the American," Boyle's superior growls at him, after Boyle argues tongue-in-cheek that racism is part and parcel of his "Irish culture").
Saddled with a new officer out of Dublin (a precinct whose inhabitants take a pretty rough beating throughout), Boyle is rolling his eyes at the kid when not insulting him to his face. "'I'm on it, Sarge,'" Boyle mutters to a suspect the two are questioning, "Thinks he's in Detroit." Boyle plays the role of the lazy, uncaring, small-town cop to a tee, though it's obvious that he's smarter than nearly anybody on the screen at any given time. Worse for him, he knows it, and this knowledge seems to leave him stranded and adrift, finding distraction where he can find it, such as telling a young boy that a derringer is actually a gun for shooting "very small Protestants."
The FBI agent is a preppie piece of upright American-ness named Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle, playing straight man to Gleeson's scene-stealer), who is there chasing a boat loaded with a half-billion dollars' worth of drugs that he thinks some smugglers are in town to pick up. The two of them are tossed together for some desultory police work and numerous sparring sessions that Boyle inevitably gets the best of. Boyle is mildly interested in the case, though to tell the truth his mind is more on that pair of hookers he's got lined up for his day off; that, and the fact that his mother (a sublimely droll Fionnula Flanagan) is in hospice waiting to die. Things get slightly more personal once the smugglers kill another garda, but even so, Boyle keeps a solid line of obsidian-black sarcasm between him and his work. So do the smugglers themselves, a trio of bickerers, two of whom (the equally marvelous Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong) seem nearly as bored by the dreary routine of their work as Boyle does.
Writer/director John Michael McDonagh is actually the brother of playwright and In Bruges creator Martin McDonagh, and it's difficult to see much daylight between the two. Though John appears to be less insistent on wreaking gruesome bloody havoc on his characters than Martin is, the two share a love of and affinity for icepick-sharp humor that's as vicious as it is deadpan. He is also more interested in tweaking pop culture, such as the smart riffs on The Usual Suspects that start cropping up near the conclusion, or the running gag in which the locals (as well-versed in serial-killer lore as any good American) ask hopefully, "Behavioral Science Unit?" when they find out there's an FBI agent in their midst. For John, the thing is not the crime, it's what people say before, during, and afterwards that matters; the more profane and shrewdly offensive, the better.
